Austria

Austria Having entered World War I as the Habsburg Imperial and Royal Monarchy—the Austro-Hungarian Empire—the nation emerged from defeat in that conflict as a much diminished and dismembered Republic of Austria, 32,400 square miles in extent, with a population of 6.7 million. The Treaty of Versailles expressly barred Austria from union with Germany. However, by virtue of the Anschluss of March 1938, the nation was incorporated into Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. When it happened, many Austrians warmly greeted Anschluss. In the course of World War II, however, as Germany and the rest of the Axis suffered increasing reverses, most Austrians began to feel that they were unwilling participants in a hopeless struggle. Austria's federal chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, was, at Hitler's behest, dismissed shortly after the Anschluss and replaced by a Nazi, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a puppet of the Third Reich. Austria was occupied by some 100,000 German troops, the Schutzstaffel (SS) acted brutally to suppress all protest and opposition, and the Reich took steps to ensure that the region's rich natural resources, including iron ore, magnesite, and wood, would be wholly available to serve its needs. Also now available to the Reich was the Austrian military. On the eve of Anschluss, mobilization and conscription doubled that force from 60,000 to 120,000. The army included a motorized division, which had nothing but obsolete tanks. The Austrian air force had 90 obsolescent aircraft. Immediately after the Anschluss, the armed forces were required to take the same oath of personal loyalty to Hitler required of German military personnel. All but 125 men did so. The Federal Army of Austria was then wholly integrated into the Wehrmacht—with the proviso that in no unit were Austrian troops to make up more than 25 percent of the force. Wartime conscription throughout Austria would greatly increase the number of Austrian men who served in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. Austrian officers were given ample opportunity to rise within the German military, some 220 individuals attaining general officer rank before the end of the war. Despite the apparently overwhelming scope and thoroughness of Anschluss, resistance groups formed throughout Austria from March 1938. The Austrian resistance maintained close links with the resistance within Germany itself. The resistance movement also established contacts with the Allies, and resistance members carried out acts of espionage and sabotage. It was the resistance that smoothed the way for the relatively easy separation from Germany and reestablishment of sovereignty that occurred after the German surrender.